We call this a bog
and not a pond because it is more mud than water. At times the standing
water will dry up completely. At other times the water will overflow and
flood the surrounding area. In it we grow bog plants, lots of bog plants.
The turtles are free to use it as they please.

The planning and
preparation for this bog garden began the previous summer. The area was
filled with large hostas which the turtles did not frequent very often.
Before the hostas it was a strawberry patch until nearby trees shaded it
too much for strawberries. The shade will benefit the bog plants that do
very well when shaded from the hottest sun of the day. This location is
also the lowest place in the turtle pen. In preparation for the spring
project, the hostas were transplanted and the area leveled. We also started
accumulating additional bog plants.

A bog will need
a source of water which can just be rain water and a garden hose like our
Bog-in-a-Box Turtle Pen. In The Bog Garden Turtle Pen we show how we tap
water from a rain down spout. We also have two bogs which are filled twice
a week with the backwash from our well water treatment systems. Condensation
from an air conditioner could also be piped to a bog. This bog gets water
from our turtle pond which is filled by rain water and a garden hose. When
the pond is cleaned, all the dirty water flows into the bog providing it
with rich nutrients (turtle poop). We call turtle enriched water "turtle
dip".

For our convenience
we placed a wood timber in the ground as one border of the bog so that
we can stand on it when the ground around the bog is wet. It also provides
a platform on which to kneel when working in the bog. Then we began digging
the hole screening all the soil as it was removed. We would have liked
to make the bog deeper, but digging deeper would put us into a layer of
shale we did not wish to work in. The soil we did remove had been enriched
with compost over the years and was suitable for placing in the bog.

We had a scrap of
rubber pond liner which came in handy for laying out the hole. It was 10
feet long which is the width of the roll; the pond liner we purchase
is 10 feet wide and sold by the linear foot. We dug the hole before we
purchased the pond liner. We had dreams of creating a longer bog, but we
were right to dig the hole first. It seems we are always working in spaces
smaller than our dreams.

Installing the rubber
liner was easy. We laid out the liner and nailed one edge to the timber
with galvanized roofing nails so that the nails were above the normal water
line but lower than the top of the timber. Soil and plants will cover this
edge completely. Then it was a matter of filling it with the screened soil
that had been removed from the hole.

The soil in the
bog was tramped down to firm it but not pack it. After excess liner was
trimmed off leaving just a few inches to be trimmed later, it was time
to start filling the bog with water. There is no doubt where the water
line is once it is filled. The liner can be adjusted by adding or removing
soil behind the liner. All this work took place in April and needed to
be done before our water turtles were brought outside for the season. Fortunately
the weather was mild and dry so we were not held up by rain turning everything
to mud. While the bog was filling with water, we brought some turtles out
for a look. They quickly began checking out the new environment. With the
heavy work behind us, the remaining fun could now be shared with the turtles.

There was no time to waste
and we were having fun. We were anxious to start planting and landscaping
our new mud hole. The bog plants were beginning to grow and we wanted to
get them established before they became tall. The loose mud would not support
tall plants. The hole had been contoured to include plant shelves around
the edges.

Our store of bog
plants included several containers with spike rush, bull tongue, and arrowheads,
our first bog for sweet flag and bull rush, the plants in the Bog Garden
and Bog-in-a-Box turtle pens, a bed of yellow flag holding on in a garden,
and creeping jenny, sedum, and umbrella sedge growing as weeds in our gardens.
None of them looked like much this early in the season.

Our mud was a soup
of soil and water whereas most of the plants were thick masses of muck
and roots. There was no need to dig holes for the plants. They were just
placed and in some cases weighted down with round stones.

About now you are
probably wandering what we are going to do to hide the rubber pond liner.
Besides being unsightly, it is a slippery slope for turtles and we do not
want small turtles to lodge themselves behind the liner. Eventually the
plants and soil will cover the edge of the liner completely. To speed this
up and keep the rubber liner from washing clean, we covered the top edge
with strips of cloth torn from old bath towels. The top edge of the liner
was trimmed flush with the soil and a trench was dug sloping away from
the liner. Half the cloth strips were then pushed down along the liner
behind the plants and mud. The other half was laid over the top edge and
into the trench. The trench was then back filled with the soil extending
over the top edge and into the bog.

The final corner
of the liner was covered by a brick path that canals water from the turtle
pond to the bog. At the end of the brick path there are round river stones
that will eventually be grown in with plants. That completes the construction
of the bog.

Now that the construction
and planting are done, it is time to watch the miracle transformation take
place. You are about to see that it is not a pond; it is a bog. All the
previous pictures were taken in April.

The only maintenance
was to pull a few weeds and add some turtle dip from the pond when needed.
Nothing is done to prepare the bog for winter except to remove any turtles
lingering in the bog. Tinytwo, our snapping turtle, was the only
turtle in the bog and he was not happy about being disturbed. Finding him
was the easy part. In spring we will simply watch nature work its miracle.

In April we like
to put our water turtles outside as early as possible. We would rather
see them basking in the sun than hibernating in our basement. They can
dig in and hibernate longer if they choose to. What you see in the next
pictures is what you would see in the wild.

We should also mention
that we recycle. Tinytwo does it, that mud on his back. When he is hungry
he moves to the turtle pond where all the mud comes off. Other turtles
using him for a perch probably help. Then when the pond is cleaned it flows
back to the bog with the turtle dip.

During a heat wave
the water in the bog averaged about 15 degrees cooler than the water in
the turtle pond just 15 feet away. This means the turtles had a real alternative
if they found the pond too warm for them. Their other alternative would
be to bury themselves in the leaf pile which is between the bog and pond.
Other than move into shade during the heat of the day, most of the water
turtles did not move to the bog because of the heat.

What we did not
see in our first year was worth waiting for. Remember this is a bog garden
for turtles that we also get to enjoy.

So there you have
it. You can use this technique to build bogs, ponds, vernal pools, wetlands,
etc. The only cost was the rubber pond liner which has an expected life
of 45 years. You don't even need turtles to have an excuse to build a bog.
You just have to like playing in mud or wet sand.

Wow! We hope you
enjoyed this tour and are inspired to build your own piece of wet nature.